The Penn State women's rugby team wanted to reveal their strengths and weaknesses this weekend, and what better way to do that then by taking on the best team they could find?

That's what the Lady Ruggers had in mind this past weekend, when they faced the Maryland Stingers, a women's club team. The Lady Ruggers were defeated by a score of 47-14, but weren't discouraged by the outcome.

"We lost," sophomore Devon Boyle said. "But that was basically expected. They had a lot of national players playing for them and we really held our own. It was a good game, a good learning experience."

The national players proved to be the biggest challenge for Penn State throughout the game.

"Once they got the ball to these two particular girls, they would just run," Boyle said. "They were good, but we weren't making the tackles we should have been making. If we were making our tackles, we could have prevented some of the scoring."

The Lady Ruggers didn't come out strong in the first ten minutes, something the team recognizes as a consistent problem.

"We do have a problem mentally preparing for the first ten minutes," sophomore Amanda Gehman said. "We are going to have to turn it around quickly. We have to get psyched up and prepared right away instead of waiting for the game to come to us."

This slow start by the Lady Ruggers allowed the Stingers to score early in the game.

Penn State was able to hold the stingers scoreless for awhile after the initial scoring.

The second half saw Gehman, who switched from wing to flanker, scoring two trys for the Lady Ruggers.

"It was a good surprise," Gehman said. "I saw the hole and ran right through it."

Stef Glecos, who helped out on the conversions, said she was pleased with the overall play of her team.

"We played very well together as a team, despite our small size," she said. "We won the ball in the rucks and we won our line outs which was very important."

Boyle said that the Lady Ruggers always schedule this game first every season, so that they can play a team at a high level.

"To play a team at that level and then come back and play a team like James Madison University, which is not at that level, is good for the team," Boyle said.

She added that the game showed that the Lady Ruggers have a really deep bench that they can draw from.

Along with the depth of the team, Glecos said that the Lady Ruggers are in good shape for the season.

"I think we were very fit," Glecos said. "We have a very fast team all the way through our forwards. I think our forwards are exceptionally fit and our backs are very fast. Physically, we are prepared, we just have to work on being mentally prepared."

The Lady Ruggers are going to use this loss as a learning experience as they prepare for JMU this weekend.

When asked how close JMU and the Maryland Stingers are skills-wise, Boyle replied, "Very far apart. The Stingers are one of the best teams we can play. They have so much experience. JMU is rumored to be getting better and we are definitely going to go into it with all we got, but the difference between these two teams is like night and day."

Gehman said, "JMU will come out with more heart and more spirit because they are playing to keep going for the semi-finals. This is do or die time for them."

Glecos is confident that her team can bounce back from this loss and play well against JMU.

"We are playing really good rugby right now," she said. "That's very encouraging and we have a really great team."